Muswell Hill

The course at Muswell Hill Golf Club was established as a 12-hole set-up by Peter Fernie (younger brother of 1883 Open champion Willie Fernie) soon after the club was founded on 1st December 1893. The layout was extended to eighteen holes in 1905 but it contracted to nine holes during World War I.

Not long after hostilities ceased and the Great War had come to an end, James Braid was called in to redesign the layout. The following edited extract is taken from John F. Moreton & Iain Cumming’s book James Braid and his Four Hundred Golf Courses and relates to a visit made on 2nd November 1922:

“Finally back from his extensive visits to Scotland, Braid was next at a North London club. Here it was bunkering that needed attention. He had played the course in September, presumably to open the reconstructed course. No doubt conversations about bunkers took place.

His thoughts about holes 1, 2, 3, 9, 12, 13 and 16 were accepted on the spot. In December all his other non-bunker recommendations were accepted. By the way, these bunkers were grass bunkers. Oddly, the first sand bunker did not arrive until 1926.

In 1920 Golf Illustrated states that ‘new land had been acquired and the new course has been laid out under the supervision of Tickle, the club professional.’ Two experts had been consulted in 1919, one of them Hawtree. Presumably all was not well and Braid was called in.

In 1929 the course underwent a further revision. Of the ten ‘new land’ holes, two survived in full, two partly. The other eight remained and remain largely as they were in Braid’s day.”